Prompt #10

as it should be

“Yellow is fake,” says Lilac to Oleander. “It is because I say so.”

Lilac tilts their head and keeps staring at the setting sun, squinting to see the colours. Oranges and yellows blended together and draped around the clouds like the most perfect curtains to ever exist, natural and ugly.

Fake.

“And all of the clouds must be paintings.” Oleander has never understood Lilac. Maybe they never would.

“What do you mean?” Lilac traces the sky with a gentle, steady hand, the clouds just barely shifting and twisting, gliding instead of pulling like a current in a river. Impossible, incomprehensible.

“Why are black and white not colors, but yellow is?” Lilac questions. Lilac has an awful lot of questions. They’ve always been curious. Not so much that they never look before they leap, but just enough to look over the edge and decide it isn’t that far of a drop.

That doesn’t mean that they would be right, however.

Oleander has always been the kind of person to never leap in the first place, let alone look. The varying perspectives is exciting the main diffference between the two.

Oleander responds, “Because black and white aren’t part of the rainbow.”

Lilac furrows their brow. “But we’re just humans. If we were mantis shrimp, and we had sixteen color receptors, then maybe black and white would be colors in the rainbow.”

Lilac gestures at all the fake colour. It dances around in streaks, brush strokes painting lines stolen right off the rainbow. “Why are we allowed to judge that if we can’t know for sure? Why can’t I declare that yellow is fake, like black and white?”

“Because we want labels.” Oleander is becoming annoyed. “We want labels, because we want to have purpose and meaning. We want to be defined. Purpose is having a place, a contribution to something. That gives us purpose, or whatever we think is purpose anyways.

“We all want purpose, because without it we don’t have meaning.”

“But why can’t we have no labels and still have meaning and purpose?” Lilac runs a hand through their hair, squeezing their eyes shut and staring at the yellows in the backs of their eyelids instead. Comforting fireworks of golden sparks, raining down in waves. An ocean of fiery yellow. It’s fake. “Labels don’t indicate worth. Labels aren’t a purpose. They’re a box. People can’t fit in boxes. I mean, I haven’t ever tried, but I don’t think the shapes would match up.”

Oleander may never understand Lilac, but they will always listen, in case one day, they find an answer in the horde of never-ending questions. In case one day, Oleander figures out why Lilac keeps them up all night when they’re not even there.

In case one day, Oleander won’t have to strike through their thoughts anymore.

“Because boxes are comforting. They’re a safe place. A shelter. And people aren’t always comfortable in their own selves, so sometimes they’ll put themselves in shelters. They’ll make a home in a label because they can’t find one in their own mind.” The words are spilling out of their mouth, clumps and pieces jumbling together. “They don’t feel comfortable with who they are, so they try to make themselves someone they like because they think that they’ll be comfortable with someone else. With a cliché.”

The words stop flowing. They drift off instead, and Oleander tries to catch them, tries to fit them in their fists. It barely works. They only snatch a single sentence. “But they never are.”

It’s a grey sentence, Oleander knows. Shiny silvery grey, colourless. It’s a truthful group of words, honest. Nothing is really black and white. Black and white sentences aren’t lies, really, but they’re always mistaken.

Grey is the only honest colour.

Oleander wonders what the least honest colour is. They think that maybe, just maybe, it might be yellow.

Lilac thinks that Oleander is right. Lilac also thinks that when they look up and open their eyes, all they can see looks like paint on the water, and their focus shifts once more.

“Crystal clear water,” they murmur. “And acrylic.”

Oleander is not following. “What?”

“The clouds,” Lilac explains. They’ve got a sleepy look on their face, and eyes like stars. “I’ve decided they’re paint on water. They can’t be real.”

Oleander wishes they could be Lilac, and see the world as simple as they do.

Just for a second.

A single, sweet second of understanding.

Oleander think about the comparisons of the both of them frequently. It’s glaringly obvious that they contrast each other greatly. One might even say that they complimented each other well.

Lilac smiles slow, small, and sweet, and Oleander doesn’t smile much at all anymore. Lilac is fantastical and creative. Oleander doesn’t even like anything other than non-fiction. Lilac always has an idea. Oleander can’t remember the last time they thought of something new, original.

Oleander wants to contribute to something. Maybe Oleander needs meaning as well.

“Maybe oil pastels on acrylic,” Oleander offers.

Lilac stretches their arms out on the grass below them, digging their fingers in the warm dirt and getting it under their nails. Wet earth stains their hands, but they don’t care. “On a canvas,” they add quietly.

Lilac feels like they could just melt into the ground, close their eyes again without looking once at the explosions of fake colours, and just fall.

Fall intangible through the core of the world, and through the other side.

Maybe even fall through China instead of digging their way there.

Fall into the sky.

Fall asleep.

And they do.

Oleander goes on to stare at the moon. And the clouds go on to being oil pastels on acrylic, and yellow goes on being fake.

Everything is wrong.

As it should be.

Writing Prompts?

I have a lot of Spotify playlists with unnecessarily long and weird names.

I make them up on the spot most of the time, and I don’t even have a reason or story for most of them. I thought that maybe they could be used for writing prompts, or at least inspiration.

So here you go, have some prompts. If you use them, then please reblog or message me. I would love to see what you make of them.

‘do you remember my name or the way i said yours?’

‘yellow + purple = grey’

‘catch me on the next ‘snapped’’

‘water, carry me down the drain’

‘here we are, at my hundredth funeral, and we should really stop doing this by now’

‘the catch to dying is consciousness’

‘necklaces of the gold star stickers i never got’

‘happy tears of pity and envy’

‘consequences of the consequence’

‘purple prose’

‘did you love me or were you lonely?’

‘lack of love is the new hatred’

‘i’m sorry you thought i was sorry :/‘

‘make orange juice from lemons’

‘our house, their home’

‘perfection is relative’

‘the fork in the road’

‘close we hold the fallen’

‘wonder where my mind goes’

Prompt #4

(Character A) is a superhero who keeps getting sued. (Character B) is their lawyer.

Prompt #11

(Character A) is a hero who unintentionally causes most of the crimes in their city. (Character B) is a villain who unintentionally fights those crimes.

Example:

(Character A) accidentally shoplifts. (Character B) steals the stolen item and drops it by the shop on accident, and so on.

(Character A) still thinks they are the hero, and (Character B) still thinks they are the villain.

said softly means you are speaking, but sweetly, and heartfelt. said quietly means it is less sweet, but still not loud or inaudible. whispered means you aren’t speaking at all, and it can have a negative or positive connotation, but more negative than softly. mumbled means it’s nearly inaudible, and has a more negative connotation.

try me, connotations are everything in writing; especially when conveying emotions.

I know adverbs are Controversial, but “said softly” means something different than “whispered” and this is the hill I will die on.

You’re walking through the woods. It’s so quiet here, so much more quiet than it used to be, and you know it. You’ve never been here before, never seen these trees before, and they look strange, but you can’t exactly place why.

Never has nature been this demented, and you can’t explain the chills running down your spine, cold water streaming down your back and never losing its consistent shock. The colours of the plants are darker here. Still, it’s simultaneously empty and grey. They’ve lost their verdant glows, and you have the sinking feeling that you will lose your own.

It’s both nostalgic and horrifying - you can feel the leaves crunching, and suddenly you are struck by the realization that it’s late spring. The river flows silently, and the leaves and water are the only sounds. You shiver. There are no birds here. They know better than to linger here. They knew better than to dissipate into the wood.

You miss the sunshine, and the familiar feeling of home. There is no light here, but you can still see, and home is so far away, and you don’t know if you can ever return, because this world is all-encompassing and you can’t shake the thought that even if you escape, this place will never truly escape you. You may never get away, you may never tear the shards of this from your mind completely.

Is this home?

You’ve been here so long. So so long. Has it been years now? Minutes or months? How can you measure this with the simplicity of time?

Would it be escape or leaving?

Somebody once said to you that the world is your oyster. What is this world? If you don’t know where you are, what do you make of it? What can you make out of nothing? Something is tugging at the edge of your consciousness. The world is swaying under your feet, dancing to a rhythm you’ve never heard before, and pulling you with it. You can feel the pieces of yourself slipping away, and it could be your vitality. It could be your colours. It could be your awareness. It could be you.

All you know is what is taking away from you.

“Mr. Sandman,” you smile deliriously. You’re so close to being gone.

Finally.

“Dream me a dream?”

You know he is what takes you when you leave.

I know I said I wouldn’t make any more sandman edits

but

I need someone to describe the exact feeling this one evokes because words are kind of failing me right now

Prompt #1

(Character A) is in a relationship with (Character B). However, they became a couple after coming home from (Character A)’s family’s trip and pretending to be together. Their family found out that they were pretending on the last day of the trip, and think they are still friends. One member of the family, one that they both hate, said that they would be good together. Neither of them want to prove the family member right.

Recently, they were invited to another family trip. Now, (Character A) and (Character B) have to pretend to still be friends, the opposite of what they did before.

Prompt #6

(Character A) is an astrologist. (Character B) is an astronomer. They are in a happy, healthy relationship.

Prompt #0.5

(Character A), a celebrity, is a big fan of (Character B), a Tumblr stan account dedicated to (Character A).

Because they suck at communication, (Character A) decides to comission fanfiction of themselves through (Character B) to talk to them.

An updated version - might go through more changes. :)

burn

It wasn’t about him. It was never about him.

In fact, she never meant for him to have any involvment in the matter, never meant for him to ever know about it. He was never meant to know anything.

It had started long before she ever knew him.

It started when her father had brought out a lighter one evening. He opened his pack of cigarettes and took a long drag, his shoulders relaxing. He sunk into the chair. He no longer cared about hiding his addiction from his daughter, playing with a doll idly on the carpeted floor, six years old and quiet as a mouse.

She was known for being a rather emotionless child. Not once had she laughed or grinned or cried. Her mother fretted about her, but her father didn’t mind. No tantrums was fine with him. The lack of feelings wasn’t a problem with him. She watched with glazed eyes as flaky ashes fell to the carpet. She stared at them as they floated gently to the floor, choking and coughing a bit from the fumes.

She stared even longer at the lighter. How could a fire be hiding in the tiny object?

Late into the night, she snuck into the living room where the lighter was still lying next to the ashtray, and stole it. The next morning, she hid it in her backpack and ran off into the woods to play.

It was yellow and shiny and had a grey top that flipped open. She immediately was fascinated, entranced. Her eyes lit up for the first time. It was so small, but had such power! When she mimicked her father’s motions, it let out a fizzling spark once, twice, thrice, and then burst into a tiny flame.

She knew what she was doing tomorrow. Her eyes burned with the fire she now possessed.

Her mother found the neighbor’s cat later that month, half-decomposed and covered in soot, and she had screamed. It was the kind of scream from a horror movie that got half-hearted reviews, one that never really sent shivers down your spine. It never even got under her skin. She didn’t care that she had been found out. The cat was annoying anyways. Her flames were bright, unstoppable, unable to be extinguished, and she would feed the fire until everything came down around her.

Years later, in her twenties, she met him. Her lover. He was sunny and bright and passionate and emotional and everything she wasn’t. He was her fire. She wanted him, in a way that she hadn’t wanted since she’d laid her eyes on that lighter over a decade ago.

And eventually, she got him. It seemed like she had attached herself to him, in a strange way. She wanted him to be hers, and only hers, but shied away from affection and emotion. She didn’t know how to respond to his hugs, how to smile for him. She didn’t know how to be genuine.

And that meant that she had to avoid him, and that meant that she left the house often, coat over her shoulders and lighter in her pocket.

She didn’t know what she wanted more, him or her fire. And that scared her.

She hadn’t known what it was like to be scared before.

She flicked the lighter, and threw it down on the large pile of dry grass and twigs at her feet. The willow tree sheltered the newborn flame, and it slowly climbed higher and higher. As it began to lick the tree top, she backed away to admire the light in the drizzling rain. Her light.

Her eyes gleamed.

Her fire burned.

Her lover still smiled for her when she came home. He smiled through watery eyes, and she wasn’t sure if it was from her late return or from the water drops tapping out a rhythm on the sidewalk or from the ash that clung to her shoulders, even through the rain. She didn’t know how to understand what he felt on their best days together.

He hugged her close and securely whenever she came home, and she responded the same. Her eyes were as dry as the Sahara, saved from the rain by her umbrella, glazed over with disinterest. Waiting for the next opportunity to buy another lighter. To buy more gasoline. To build a stack of sticks and grass. To relish in the newfound brightness.

To burn.

(She never thought about how he had had an umbrella of his own when she came out to greet him, and how his clothes were dry.)

She would set the world on fire just to watch it go ablaze, and she would smile the same smile she always had before. An answering smile. An answer to the questions, to the counselors at school and the dead cat her mother found covered in charcoal and gasoline, to the classmates who were afraid of her in kindergarten, to the prescriptions in her cabinet, ever fluorescent.

To her lover, whose eyes were still full of water on the sunniest day of the year. She still ignored the drip-dropping of water on her neck whenever they hugged.

(It wasn’t raining.)

(She didn’t know how to explain it, so she avoided it.)

(Sometimes, she thinks that he cries because he doesn’t know what to do anymore.)

He cried when she left and cried when she came home, and he cried when he was alone and cried when she was with him. He cried when she smelled like a campfire and when she had ashes sprinkled in her hair, and he cried when their budgeting started to include lighters and gasoline.

He cried every tear that she never could.

Sometimes she wished that she could cry for him instead. He must have been so dehydrated.

(For his birthday, she bought him a nice water bottle. “So you can stay hydrated. You cry an awful lot,” she said. He grinned and hugged her, then pulled away quickly.

“Thank you.” His lips were wobbly and saltwater streamed down his cheeks. She smelled like a campfire.)

She always had grey peppering her clothes. Her smile was subdued, but her eyes were distant and wild. Like they knew something. Like they had already watched the world burn down in their head a million times, and enjoyed every second.

A psychopath.

An arsonist.

Someone who burned trees and papers for fun. Someone who bought too many lighters in too little time. (The gas station attendant had never seen so many lighters be laid out on the checkout counter.) Someone who watched her lover cry and looked away with disinterest. Someone who didn’t leave the house one day to burn.

(He was still home, crying in the corner. She didn’t notice him until the end.)

Someone who never cried when she watched her lover scream and his tears evaporate, ugly crying, with eyes of crimson and half moon bruises underneath and snot running down his face, saltwater on his tongue and dripping off his chin just to go up and evaporate in flames and smoke.

Someone who died with her lover by accident and didn’t care. Someone who watched the flames with gleaming eyes until the end.

(Her eyes were still gleaming when they burned to the ground.)